XI

Crab’s content with crab’s provender:  crab’s love, if soothing,
  Is no sweeter than pincers are soft—­and a new sickle
Cuts no sharper than crab’s claws nip, keen as boar’s toothing! 
  Yet crab’s love’s no less fervent than bard’s, if less musical—­
’Tis a new thing I’d lilt—­but a true thing.

XII

Old songs tell us, of all drinks for Englishmen fighting, ale’s
  Out and out best:  salt water contents crab, it seems to me,
Though pugnacious as sailors, and skilled to steer right in gales
  That craze pilots, if slow to sing—­“Sleep’st thou? thou dream’st
    o’ me!”
In such love-strains as mine—­or a nightingale’s.

XIII

Ah, now, look you—­tail foremost, the beast sets seaward—­
  The sea draws it, sand sucks it—­he’s wise, my crab! 
From the napkin out jumps his one talent—­good steward,
  Just judge!  So a man shirks the smile or the stab,
And sets his sail duly to leeward!

XIV

Trust me?  Hardly!  I bid you not lean (remark)
  On my spirit, your spirit—­my flesh, your flesh—­
Hold my hand, and tread safe through the horrible dark—­
  Quench my soul as with sprinklings of snow, then refresh
With some blast of new bellows the spark!

XV

By no means!  This were easy (men tell me) to say—­
  “Give her all, throw your chance up, fall back on her heart!”
(Say my friends) “she must change! after night follows day—­”
  No such fool!  I am safe set in hell, for my part—­
So let heaven do the worst now he may!

XVI

What they bid me?  Well, this, nothing more—­“Tell her this—­
  ’You are mine, I yours, though the whole world fail—­
Though things are not, I know there is one thing which is—­
  Though the oars break, there’s hope for us yet—­hoist the sail! 
Oh, your heart! what’s the heart? but your kiss!’

XVII

“Then she breaks, she drops down, she lies flat at your feet—­
  Take her then!” Well, I knew it—­what fools are men! 
Take the bee by her horns, will your honey prove sweet? 
  Sweet is grass—­will you pasture your cows in a fen? 
Oh, if contraries could but once meet!

XVIII

Love you call it?  Some twitch in the moon’s face (observe),
  Wet blink of her eyelid, tear dropt about dewfall,
Cheek flushed or obscured—­does it make the sky swerve? 
  Fetch the test, work the question to rags, bring to proof all—­
Find what souls want and bodies deserve!

XIX